


The Aurora Effect

by Freyjabee



Category: Edens Zero (Manga)
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M, Fantasy, Romance, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:54:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29344680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freyjabee/pseuds/Freyjabee
Summary: The ship is destroyed, comms are down. All Justice has is the cold of the alien planet beneath his feet and the rule-bending cadet he's been condemned to eternity with.
Relationships: Elsie Crimson & Justice
Kudos: 5





	The Aurora Effect

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of the Fairy Tail/ Edens Zero Big Bang event. My partner in this endeavour is the wonderfully talented Ahri on Twitter (theseventhstar on Tumblr). Please, please, please check out her artwork for this, it is so fantastic :) I'm so honoured to have worked with her.
> 
> Edens Zero belongs to Hiro Mashima
> 
> p.s. this was written before Justice's backstory was revealed. Think of it as an AU what-if.

Space is a black hungry hole that eats life as soon as it makes it. Errant cadets are some of its favourite meals. That's what Commodore Wraith said in orientation six months ago. Justice was inclined to believe him then and still holds firm to the belief now. They're a lot of lightyears away from everything. The only ride off this base is the Interstellar Union's ships and the IUA doesn't volunteer to take cadets with cold feet home.

Crimson doesn't seem to believe that. She's tried asking to leave nicely, was promptly declined, and now she's resorted to berating. Justice can hear her poisoned tongue from his post, where he inspects his cooling coils. She has called Commodore Wraith every name she can think of, and some Justice thinks she inventively makes up on the spot. The Commodore lets it go on, but he does not take it in stride, despite the peaceful look on his face. Justice can see the vein throbbing on his neck, the one that bulges when he's greatly annoyed.

Eventually, Crimson runs out of steam. Her shoulders heave with the effort.

"You're riding the cargo bay," Wraith says into the silence. "Guarding it, too. You're not stepping foot on that planet when we land."

Crimson leans away as though struck. She opens her mouth.

"Another word of complaint, you're here, Crimson, and you're not leaving base until you've learned respect."

"Yes, Sir," she says after too long a pause.

Wraith's name is called from the other side of the loading bay. "Finish your duties and get ready for launch," he orders her before drifting off to address this new problem.

Justice watches Crimson. Her shoulders are slumped, and her eyelids are lowered over her brown eyes. Her lip pouts out a bit, a child scolded.

"You don't quit the IUA. It's the first thing they tell you the day you sign up," Justice feels inclined to tell her as she settles in beside him.

"Yea, sure, if you actually signed up," Crimson gripes. It's meant to be muttered under her breath but she's a little too annoyed and Justice's hearing is excellent.

"What does that mean?"

"Shut up and mind your own business, golden boy." She bites like a mean dog, eyes flashing.

"It's an honour to be considered for the IUA." He can bite, too. "We're the peace in the galaxy."

She says nothing, though he can see she wants to, badly. Crimson has a lot of opinions regarding the IUA. Justice can't understand why she'd bother getting involved if she hates it so much. Conscription hasn't been a thing since the last great war.

Confused but knowing he'll not get a straight answer from her, Justice retreats to his coils to calibrate the nitrogen injectors. The wrong mixture and the engines will overheat.

Crimson returns to her own task—checking Justice's work.

When it's time to takeoff and Justice climbs into the cargo bay with Crimson, she scowls. "Cargo guard is a one-person job." She points to the ship-mounted gun turrets that will target enemies on command. "I don't need help."

"I don't make the rules," Justice answers.

She sighs hugely. "Did Wraith tell you to watch me?"

"Captain Eidolon assigned me the cargo bay last week when he was handing out assignments. He hasn't issued new orders, so we're riding together."

Crimson throws herself down on one of the chairs and begins the extensive process of strapping herself in for takeoff. She still reminds Justice of a petulant child, not quite getting what she wants.

He checks their load to ensure it's secure before he sits opposite her, determines to pass the assignment in silence. It's preferable anyway.

Captain Eidolon's voice rattles through Justice's comm asking him for a status report.

"All green," Justice says.

The line goes dead. Justice settles back in his seat. Crimson is staring at him. He feels her eyes like a weight on his skin. He tells himself not to bother looking at her, but he can't help it.

When their eyes meet, she asks, mouth quirked, "Justice. Did you choose your own call sign?"

The way she says it is mocking. Justice finds himself flushing, though he's never found it cause for embarrassment before. "We all did. Didn't you?"

Crimson grabs the ends of her plaited hair and runs her fingers through it. "Fitting, I thought."

"Base." He can't help but get a cut in, trying to make himself feel less foolish.

Crimson laughs.

The engines hum. They lift into the air, out of the artificial atmosphere, and in a moment, they're underway, tearing into warp speed. Justice curls his hands around his chair, closes his eyes. He hates this part the most, though it never lasts very long. Five minutes, and it's over.

The captain's voice comes over the comms again. "Approaching destination. Dropping out of warp."

When they fall out of warp, Justice feels, for an instant, like his guts were left back on the base. Using the warp drive is hard on his system, like speeding forward and then slamming to a sudden halt. He swallows twice, unbuckles himself from his jumper seat, intent on getting to the computer to begin the landing sequence. When he goes to stand, though, the ship tilts and he's thrown to the floor.

He can't get a word of protest out; all the air has left his lungs.

A great shudder runs through the hull, like a giant gasping in a dying breath, and then Justice feels heat through the metal. He doesn't understand what's happening. The floor is flexing beneath his hand.

Then he hears the Captain's voice again. "All hands, report to your stations and prepare for a warp core ejection."

The computer takes over then, " _Warp core breach in two minutes, fifty seconds. All hands, prepare for warp core ejection. Warp core breach in two minutes, forty seconds. All hands, prepare for warp core ejection. Warp core breach in—"_

Justice realizes if he doesn't strap in, he'll be a smear of red on the ship's hull. He rushes, throwing himself back in his seat, struggling with the seat buckles. Across from him, Crimson looks pale, sick.

A great wail goes through the ship and the emergency lights start to flash.

_"Warp core breach in one minute, thirty seconds. All hands, prepare for warp core ejection in 10-9-8-'_

_No,_ Justice thinks. _Nonono._

It happens anyway. When it departs from the ship, they surge forward with impulse engines, fighting to get away from the blast. A container breaks free of its straps, rolls across the ground, hits his leg. Something in his foot twists. It doesn't hurt at first.

 _Never will._ Justice's thoughts get dark, fast. Nothing survives a warp core breach. Nothing—

Crimson launches out of her seat. Justice watches as she forces the door wide. She's almost out in the hallway, but she hesitates, looks back at him, and he can see she's annoyed by his presence, his prone body, his inactivity.

"Get up," she tells him, and he obeys her for reasons he can't quantify, unstrapping himself.

The hallways are shrouded in darkness that's interrupted occasionally by the pulsing emergency light. They've redirected every ounce of power on the ship to the engines, struggling in vain to outrun a blast that will hit the ship at a speed faster than the speed of light, vaporizing everything.

Justice can't understand anything; his thoughts are foggy; his pulse is roaring in his ears.

The ship shakes and he thinks they're too late, that the blast has hit them already, but Crimson continues, screaming about torpedo launches that are sent out to meet and dissipate the blast. He still doesn't understand what she's saying until she yanks him into the munitions bay, and he sees the empty cradles. The Hermes has dropped its entire payload in an attempt to break the blast of the warp core, like a tsunami meeting a concrete wall.

Crimson yanks the door closed, engages the lock, and pulls on the helmet of her High Orbit Re-entry Suit. Her eyes meet Justice's through her helmet. All at once, he understands her plan, and it's crazy, insane, but maybe…

They have seconds. Justice fights to get his own helmet on his head, and then to once again get himself strapped into the jumper seats. The buckles click just as the shockwave hits. Justice feels rather than hears it. There is no sound in space. It's so starved, it eats that, too.

It's the worst thing he's ever experienced, scorching heat that presses through the plated steel, through his suit. The munitions bay separates from the main hull like a piece of rotten fruit pulling free from a disintegrating vine. They cascade so fast, he thinks his brain will bleed out his ears, paint the inside of his helmet. He can't breathe.

In seconds, they hit what can only be an atmosphere. The resistance slows the munitions bay fractionally. Crimson finds the strength to stand against the gravitational force. Justice follows her lead; his limbs are leaden. He still can't draw breath. Black spots dot his vision, and he thinks all this, it's only prolonged the inevitable. They're going to die anyway.

The munitions bay finally starts to break apart, its hull pushed too far. As it shatters around them, Crimson reaches for Justice and Justice for her. They cling to each other, heads bent together, fingers tight to the point of breaking. Justice counts the seconds, seeing the hull open around him, cracked, like an egg, the black of space above, the violet of an ocean below. They're free, in the open, no protection surrounding them, speeding like bullets through the atmosphere.

Crimson's muscles tighten. He hears her voice in his headset, saying, " _Jump_. _Now_." She doesn't yell. Her voice is just slightly breathy to belie her panic.

Justice engages his suit's thrusters, though he doesn't think it'll help. The AI in his suit tries to compensate while his body just gives up. Everything goes black.

* * *

There's a heaviness in his lungs that cannot be ignored. Justice rolls over instinctually, unable to do anything else, and expels burning salty water from his lungs. It explodes from his mouth, his nose, and sinks into the glossy black sand beneath him. It goes on for what feels like forever, him struggling to breathe, the water just streaming out. His helmet lays next to him. It's broken. Fractured right down the centre. It should have been his head.

He curls his gloved hands into the sand, disturbs a nest of lime green insects with four distinct back legs, two sets of small ones in the front, and a huge set of pedipalps. They scrabble over his ruined and soggy gloves and where they've been, his skin erupts in boils. It burns the way acid does. Justice cannot crawl away from them. He must let it happen. He has an antihistamine dispensary built into his suit. He hopes it's not ruined.

Finally. Finally, he can pull in a burning breath. The air tastes like sulfur. He coughs, turns his nose up.

"We landed on the edge of a mudflat," says a familiar voice.

Justice turns, spots Crimson sitting just feet away in a patch of scraggly-looking grass that the lime green insects veer away from as if poisoned. Her knees are pulled up to her chest; her cheek is burned; her eye is covered by a makeshift patch fashioned from her undershirt. Justice can see the IUA logo printed on it. Her suit looks as ruined as his. Her jet pack is nowhere to be found. Justice's lies beside him scorched black and melted.

"What happened?"

Crimson's hand flickers to her eye, hovers, falls away. "Mites in the water," is all she will say. Justice pages through his knowledge of Aurora and its system and remembers: its sister planet, Aurora Polaris, is a planet overrun by the class Insecta. Most of them are vegetarian, but more than a few are opportunistic and will eat another insect as well as it will eat a human.

"Damnit." Three class M planets in the system and they land on the one class H. "We have to get out of here." He rises. His ankle protests. It's not broken, he thinks, but it aches like he tore the tendon. He wonders if he'll be sick with the pain.

Crimson leaves her sanctuary and helps him, putting her arm around his back, her shoulder beneath his, and together, they hobble off the beach, leaving the glittering ocean, purple with mites, behind.

The planet is silent except with the sound of scurry legs, moving too fast, too many, all at once. Justice feels like he's being watched from all corners of the globe. His skin crawls. "We need to call Command." He jabs at the comm piece in his ear, waiting to hear a beep and a voice on the other end, but static is all there is.

"I've tried," Crimson says. "Radiation from the warp explosion knocked our comms. Probably all the comms in the system."

Justice lets his hand fall away. "What about the distress beacon?'

She shrugs, the movement pulling on Justice's arm, which pulls on his body, which pulls, eventually, on his ankle. "Distress beacon is located in the bridge. It's vaporized."

Justice wants to scream in frustration. He strives to keep the calamity at bay. "They'll come looking for us."

"Maybe," she says, and she doesn't sound hopeful.

"Why do you say it like that?"

"Because no one was supposed to be in the munitions bay. It's shielded to prevent weapons explosions in an emergency, and the Hermes evacuated her payload to mitigate the warp explosion. As far as the IUA is concerned, we're dead."

"Damnit," Justice says again. He glowers at Crimson, though it isn't her fault. "What the hell happened?"

"From what I can tell, the warp's cooling system failed." She looks to the sky as she answers as though it's of no concern to her. As though they're not stranded.

"We checked those."

"Apparently not good enough."

He scours his memory for any indicators. Everything is fuzzy. The guilt weighs on him like a slab against his chest.

"We're the only survivors," Justice murmurs.

"Yes."

"Doesn't that bother you?"

"We might be here for a long time, Justice," she says after some consideration. She levels her gaze on him. "A long time, with only each other and our thoughts for company. We should be kinder to ourselves."

He wishes for the first time of many that he can compartmentalize his thoughts just like her.

"I think a storm is coming," Crimson says, pointing to a direction Justice thinks is north. There's a mountain of crumbled rock, probably chewed up by Aurora Polaris' infamous rock beetles, over which a green cloud is growing. "We should find shelter." Then she looks at Justice's swollen ankle, seen even through his sub-zero boots. "Or _I'll_ find shelter. You can wait here for me."

She untangles herself from Justice, leaving him to stand on his own. His ankle twinges but if he doesn't make any sudden movements, he's okay.

"Are you sure?"

"We have to do something," she says. "We'll die of exposure if we don't."

Aurora Polaris is the furthest planet from the sun in this system; her weather patterns run cold; Justice remembers. Judging by the sparse and hearty plant life, he thinks they've landed somewhere near the equator, but still, nights can drop to minus five in the summer months.

Crimson chooses a direction and starts walking without any fanfare and Justice feels a stone sink in his stomach. "You'll come back, right?" he asks without meaning to. His voice wavers, announcing the fear he's been trying to ignore.

Crimson pauses, looks over her shoulder at him. Her hair is a tangle in the growing breeze and her one eye is unsettling, a brown so dark, it's nearly black. "Unless I'm eaten."

 _Unless_ you _are,_ remains unsaid. Justice drags himself over to another scraggly patch of grass. It smells like ammonia, which is why, he assumes, the insects don't bother with it.

 _Try to hurry_ , he thinks of saying at Crimson's back, but cannot bring himself to, knowing how annoyed he'd be if he was in her position.

* * *

Midday gives way to evening and a new crowd of native insects starts to move in. They buzz by Justice's head on wings so huge, they cut audibly through the air.

He doesn't hate bugs.

He has no love for them either.

Especially when they run big enough to eat him. The one he's just ducked is the size of a blue jay. He can see the sharp points of its tarsal claws, in which it clutches another bug, this one dragonfly-like.

And there is more. Some the same size as the last, some bigger still. The air hums with the sound of their wings as they try to get their evening feeding in before it's too cold for them to move and they fall into stasis for twelve hours until the sun rises again.

It's been so long since Crimson has gone, Justice can't help but think one of two very terrible things has happened: either she's abandoned him or she really has been eaten.

He tries not to let his thoughts go to that stormy place in his mind, the one he keeps tucked away and medicated with his happy pills—his mother's word for them, not his. It's been a long time since he's had a dose, though, and everything is looking a little dark, a little dead-end. He circles around and again: we're stranded. I'm stranded. We're injured. I'm injured. We're alone. I'm alone.

 _She's never coming back_.

A long snake-like insect slithers to the edge of the grass, reaches out to Justice's leg with antenna-like appendages. His body is slow as his brain tries to decide what's happening.

A black boot crushes the insect's middle and black goo oozes out, smoking, stinking. Justice looks up. Crimson is there, her one eye narrowed. "That thing will shoot acid that'll melt your skin."

"Thanks."

Her eye narrows further. _I don't want your thanks,_ she seems to say. _I don't even want to be here with you_.

"Did you find anything?"

"Better than." She crouches, throws his arm around her shoulder, and hoists him up with a small grunt.

* * *

Justice must crawl on his hands and knees to get in through the opening in the mangled piece of fuselage Crimson has dragged from the water's edge. It's small, ten by four, too short to stand upright in, but it'll keep them dry and it'll keep them from the worst of the cold, he hopes.

He's afraid of the puddles of water where mites might still be living, but Crimson's lined the entire thing in that dry rye-like grass to keep the worst of the creatures out. It stinks. It stinks like medicinal things and ammonia.

Justice spots one of the emergency first aid kits each of their suits is equipped with, gutted, bits and pieces splayed out on the ground. Crimson's obviously cleaned her eye.

Crimson climbs in behind Justice and settles down on the padded floor. "There's a compress there." She points to the pile unenthusiastically. "And a thermal blanket. If you get yours, we can put it on the ground to shield us from the cold and use mine on top. You better be a good cuddler," she says as Justice works to do just that. "Without the computer working in our suits to help regulate temperature, it's going to make for some cold nights."

"You're in it for the long-haul, huh?" Justice asks.

Crimson shrugs. "Chances are, this is where we die."

Justice rejects the suggestion as soon as he hears it. "You can if you want. I'm not going to."

"And how do you suggest we remedy our situation?"

"You've been training with engineering," Justice points out.

This makes Crimson smile. "I didn't know you'd noticed."

He feels a flush trying to crawl up his neck. "It's a small group." One hundred cadets in all.

She laughs, though the movement must put pressure on her destroyed eye. "Okay."

"It's true."

"What of it?"

"We can try to rebuild my jetpack and…" he trails off.

"You might get into the stratosphere," she agrees. "But then what?"

And Justice doesn't have an answer. At least, not a good one that doesn't depend on the IUA investigating their warp breach and spotting him on chance.

"What if we scavenge the computer from the munitions bay and try to send out a distress signal?"

She looks meaningfully at his ankle. "Even if that wasn't the stupidest idea ever, you're a little broken, my friend. You won't be scavenging anything."

"Why is it stupid?"

"Because most of the munitions bay is ruined, and what isn't is under a metric ton of eat-you-alive water. The computer's fried. All it's circuit boards, all its connections. They're all fried." She looks like she's going to add something else, thinks better of it.

It's lost on Justice. He's thinking she's right; the saltwater has probably destroyed it already. He needs something, though, a bit of sunshine to burn at the darkness in his thoughts. "What's your plan, then?"

She purses her lips thoughtfully. He doesn't know what he expects, but it's not, "Find some dinner and some water before the sky opens up."

She gets on her hands and knees well ahead of Justice's protest and climbs out the hole in the fuselage. He's alone, with only the scrape of her knees in the dirt to mark that she'd been there at all.

* * *

It's almost dark by the time Crimson returns, and it's getting cold enough, Justice can see his breath. Her combat knife is held out in front of her, two of the huge insects Justice had seen earlier that day skewered on the blade. Green ichor slips down the blade and across her gloved hand.

"Dinner," she sing-songs. "And liquid." She holds out a canteen full to bursting.

Justice takes the water but scrunches his nose up at the bugs. "Maybe we can wait a day."

"Awe, come on. I got the juicy one just for you," she tells him with a smile that shows her teeth. She winces at its apex, reminded of her injured eye, curbing her superior tone.

"You don't know if they're edible."

"Of course I do," she responds. "They're also native to Aurora and the people there think they're a delicacy."

"And you know that because?" He's not ready to be fooled by her confident swagger.

"Because I, unlike you, have a personality. I love people, places, and things, and one of those things happens to be food."

"I have a personality," Justice complains.

"If cranky is a personality trait, then sure." She nestles in beside him, unembarrassed. Her skin is warm through her suit. Another chill travels through Justice. His next complaint is washed away when Crimson tears off one of the insect's spindly legs and crushes it between her teeth.

"Oh wow," she says, eye closed, head back.

"What?"

She opens her eye, looking at him from its corner, and raises her eyebrow. "It's totally disgusting."

She laughs and takes another bite; he can't tell if she's serious or not.

* * *

It snows at night. It piles up outside the fuselage. Justice keeps to the middle where he hopes it'll be warmer. Crimson has rolled against him. They fit together beneath the blanket only if they're folded in like this, her arms crossed and pressed against his chest, his around her back.

When morning breaks, the snow melts, Justice's stomach cramps with hunger, and Crimson rises to find more food.

This time, when she brings back her beetle-like kills, chilled, still sleeping from their frosty night, Justice eats one.

Crimson is right.

They are disgusting.

He can't keep the first one down. Or the second. By day three, though, he manages. It gets easier after that.

* * *

"I found a pool," Crimson tells him. Her hair drips against her collar, sluices over the glossy black of her suit. The sun blazes down upon her and insect song creaks through the air. "Well, a spring, really. It's safe for bathing."

It's been six days. Justice looks at his grimy hands, can feel the weight of his greasy hair, and he feels filthy. He needs to bathe and wash the liner in his suit, but the thought of being a buffet to the natives of this planet makes him cringe.

"I'd rather not."

"It's safe," Crimson insists. "Freezing. But it's safe."

He rises before he makes the conscious effort to do so and waves her on. She smiles wide and leads the way through the tall, spindly plants Justice has come to think of as a forest. They're not trees, their tops ending in two single purple leaves that reach for the warmth of the sky, and their trunks are hollow. They're too fibrous to burn—he tried that one already, managing to make it smoulder but that is all.

He limps after her deep into the forest, going slow and still managing to feel the ache deep in his foot. He hates tendon injuries. They take the longest to heal, are unforgiving.

Finally, just when he thinks he can't go on any longer, Crimson comes to a halt. Justice looks over her shoulder to a pool that sits in a deep depression. Around its edges are black sand and the roots of the spindly plants. He can see where she climbed out, a few roots are broken.

"There's a clearer path over here." Crimson wraps his arm around her shoulder this time and they slowly make their way to the other side of the pond.

"There were no bugs?"

"No mites," she answers. "It's freshwater."

He peels himself out of his suit when they stop. Crimson turns her back to give him some privacy. She watches the sky where the clouds whip by. The winds are high on Aurora Polaris. It is a stormy planet with conditions too hearty for extended stays by mammals.

Justice lowers himself into the icy water. He holds his breath to contain his yell of disdain, but Crimson seems to know and laughs anyway.

"It's refreshing," she calls to him. "Even better when you get out and warm up."

"Yeah, right," he grumbles and dips his head under.

Crimson's missing eye in the back of his mind. Nothing bothers him, though. He can't even see movement of bugs beneath the surface. He counts his blessings and scrubs with sand from the spring's outer edge, almost peeling his skin away with it. It feels amazing.

He gives the inner layer of his suit the same treatment, scrubbing it until he's afraid it'll tear. Finally, he's done.

"Do you need help out?" Crimson looks at him for the first time, a wicked gleam in her eye. Justice flushes, which he assumes was her goal because that gleam turns to a laugh and he doesn't know how she can stay so high spirited when they're stranded on a class H alien planet, but here they are. He finds himself laughing, too. It breaks away some of the storm clouds in his mind.

"Turn around."

She obliges, though she does say, "We've been sleeping together for a week now, Justice. I know almost all there is to know about you."

He hopes it's not true but fears it's so.

Getting out of the pond is easier than getting in. He finds a space beneath one of the plants near the water's edge, this one huge around, and settles beneath it, naked, shivering, but warming beneath the sun's glow. He's wary of bugs, but it seems this is an oasis of sorts.

"Do you think we'll die here?" he asks as he rings out his suit lining and lays it out beside him.

"I plan to go beneath the stars," Crimson says with a dreamer's lilt. She's closer than Justice expects, nestled up on the other side of the plant, still looking at the sky.

"I'd like to, too," he hears himself say. Cradled by the vastness of space, a hero, if he can help it.

"I'm not going to die on this planet," Crimson says. It's almost like a promise.

Justice repeats, "I'm not going to die on this planet."

Except, when the sun slides beneath a cloud and steals away the warmth, it doesn't feel entirely true.

* * *

Justice keeps track of time and weather patterns on the inside of the fuselage, trying to predict what season they're in. Crimson insists it's late spring, but he thinks it might be early fall. Even in the short time they've been there, he's noticed a change in the weather. The nights are getting colder. The snow falls more and more and takes longer to melt during the day. He thinks about moving their camp but knows this is the best place for them. So near the water, it's damp, but at least the ocean keeps the worst of the cold away.

His ankle still hurts, but every day, he's able to put more weight on it. He's gone for short walks early in the morning and late in the evening when the bugs are less active, hobbling with the aid of a skinny, hollow stick Crimson gathered for him. All he sees is tufted grass, stone, ocean. Sometimes, broken pieces of fuselage will wash ashore.

When he looks to the sky, he can see the Borealis system spread out around him, but no IUA ships rushing to his rescue.

He hates eating bugs.

* * *

"It's been seventeen days. Can you believe it?" Justice grouses.

"Sure feels like it," Crimson says.

He ignores her jab. "I can't believe they haven't scanned for survivors."

"Yes, you can." She's leaning back against the dry grass she spread out the first day they crashed. When the sun beats down on the black fuselage, the interior warms alarmingly fast. She's stripped to her undershirt, pushed her jumpsuit down around her waist. Her muscles are ropy, defined. She hadn't much weight to lose when they landed but a steady diet of pure protein and very little fat has made her leaner still. Justice, too, feels himself thinning out.

"You know they think we're dead," she answers. "Everyone on the Hermes died. Why wouldn't we?"

She's right, he feels it in his bones. "We need to find a way to tell them differently."

"Scavenge the wreck again?" Crimson's blasé attitude irks Justice to his core.

"We need to do _something_ other than sit here, eating bugs. I hate feeling like we're not doing anything," Justice complains.

"Have you tried writing SOS in the sand?" Crimson asks.

Justice looks up from his makeshift blackboard where he's scratching day seventeen's weather. "You're not funny."

"You're the first to say so."

"Doubt that."

Things quiet between them for a time, then Crimson surprises him by asking, "What's your name? Like, your real name. What did your mother call you at birth?"

"We're not supposed to give out our names," he says automatically. "You know the rules."

"The IUA's rules? They're half a galaxy away," she responds with a wave of her hand. "Likely, we'll never see them again. It's you and me, darling. I was born Elsie. Elsie Crimson. And you?"

Justice's name falls onto his lips. It won't come out, though. He's too engrained in procedures.

Elsie laughs that mean little laugh she has, reserved for when she thinks he's being stupid (too often, Justice thinks, and wishes he'd been stranded with someone less vocal with their thoughts). "Suit yourself. Justice, it is."

He picks at one of the many tears he's repaired in his jumpsuit. It's good work, but the material's integrity has suffered. "If you never liked the IUA, why did you join it?"

"My caregiver thought I should do something good for this world," she answers without the hesitation she had the day they launched. "He signed me up for the army."

Justice looks up from his stitch patch to scrutinize her. "Not only are you not allowed to forge an application, it's impossible. They match your DNA and your retina scan there to confirm your identity."

"When you have one of the universe's best hacking bots on your side, anything's open to you."

Justice lets that sink in. The message in front of the action is kind but the actions to carry it out are cruel, and he can't tell if they're intentional. "Did he not want you anymore?"

Her attention snaps to him and her mouth slumps into a frown. "We were family."

That's not an answer, though and when he says it (he doesn't know what's possessed him—days of only one person to talk to? Malnutrition? Insanity?) she crawls out of the fuselage.

Justice can see her feet denting the snow in the opening. He rummages for things to say to apologize for barging in, or to comfort her, to stop her leaving, but all he can think is _the IUA wants you_ and he doesn't think she'll appreciate it. Not right now.

Besides, Elsie is walking away.

* * *

It's dark. The moon has risen, and Elsie still hasn't returned. Justice is now used to her venturing out on her own for long periods of time, has done some exploring of his own, admittedly, but Aurora Polaris is rife with danger beyond its wildlife. Pitfalls and holes in its granite shield, warm mudflats that freeze on the surface but give way with the slightest pressure, ready to drown you. He doesn't think she's foolish enough to fall into something so obvious, but it's dark and the ground is snowy.

He crawls out of the fuselage into the cold night air, where the snow falls sparsely. Through the tall hollow plants he has no name for, he can see patches of cloud that slide over Polaris' three moons. At least one is always visible so there always light to guide his steps.

He moves off memory, tracking through the shrubbery and snowy undergrowth, moving slow and watching his step. He calls Elsie by her codename, and then by her real name. It feels like he's screaming a secret. _Elsie._ Some intimate part of her he's not supposed to know.

She doesn't respond to either. Justice's head starts to get stormy, imagining a lifetime alone on this cold and crawling planet, no way out, no hope of rescue, himself, and the bugs to talk to. He'll go mad. His tongue is dry as he retreats to the darkest part of his mind.

"Elsie!" He sounds desperate though he tries to not, to keep the hopelessness at bay. Giving into it is giving in to a landslide. Giving into helplessness, and Justice never wants to feel that way.

He reaches the extent of where he's explored. His ankle is aching, the tendons tight and sore, snapping against the bone each time he takes a step. His foot feels swollen and hot in his boot. He realizes he's left his walking stick back at the camp. Any new ones he tries to grab snaps in half, soggy and rotting.

He walks slower when he wants to do the opposite, pushing past the known parameter, looking for evidence of Elsie's path. It's now snowing so much, it's hard to tell if the indents in the snow are her footprints or depressions in the ground. He follows them because there's nothing left for him to do. They are evenly spaced apart and hope kindles in his heart, pushes back the darkness so he can think, so he can function.

The steps lead through the grassy forest and back toward the ocean. It's a part of the ocean he hasn't ventured to, though, because of his injury, yes, but also because unlike the rest of the planet when it gets cold, the ocean and her denizens don't sleep. He hears it lapping at the beach, its waves an icy tongue.

The forest breaks and the ocean spreads out in front of him, touched by the light of the three moons for a brief instant. It's beautiful, but his eyes track to Elsie. She sits in the snow with her head tilted back toward the moon. Her face is bisected by her makeshift eyepatch. It hasn't taken her very long to get used to it. She only takes it off to clean her eye, and never when Justice is around.

"I called for you," Justice says.

Elsie's shoulders stiffen for an instant, then relax again. "I can't hear over the waves."

That could be it, but the way she holds her body makes him think that's not the entire truth. She didn't want to hear.

A shadow crawls over one of the moons and bends its light toward the forest. Something glints in its shadows. Justice feels for his knife, sure one of the insectile beasts has discovered a way to move around in the cold, but what he sees makes his heart stop. One of Hermes's short-range fighter ships lay on its side, looking like a felled giant.

"It must have broken its brackets when they jettisoned the warp core and crash-landed here. I found it last week," Elsie says.

Justice whirls on her. "Last _week_? Why didn't you say anything?"

"I didn't see the point." She still is looking at the sky. Her posture is much more relaxed now, as though she's gotten something unpleasant over with and can finally move on. He supposes hiding this from him would qualify but he doesn't see how she can just _move on._

" _The point is_ , we now have a way to get off this garbage planet. We can't go far, but we can limp to Aurora, get help."

Elsie stands, turns on him. He's never seen her look like this before, furious. "I'm not going back and if you try to make me, I will leave you on this godforsaken hellhole." She means it. In every inch of her core, she means it. She plans to desert and it's his duty, he knows, to stop her. Arrest her if need be.

"Besides," she adds, a little more civilized, as though her thoughts aren't going in the same direction of his own, "it's damaged."

Justice's heart is galloping in his chest. "We can fix it." He wants to do it right now, beneath the light of the moon.

Elsie shakes her head. "Not in the dark. We can look at it together in the morning."

Justice has a hard time turning his back on it, afraid if he does, it'll disappear. "Have you tried its comms? Most of the radiation has to be passed now."

Elsie settles in beside him, taking part of his weight on her shoulder. "They're ruined."

"How do you know?"

He feels her chest fill against his ribs. "Because I ruined them."

Justice tries to stop, turn, rage. Elsie won't let him. "I'm not going back," she reiterates.

He's shaking, he's so furious, so cold. Snow swirls around them, suddenly falling from the sky like a sheet of rain, blurring everything, covering it in its white glamour.

He doesn't know how they go forward from here, but they do, one foot in front of the other, back to their camp where they sit knee-to-knee and share a rangy dinner, Elsie thinking of her life after the IUA, and Justice thinking of duty and responsibility.

"If I never wanted it, never had the choice, why should I be forced to live it?" Elsie queries as though she can read his mind, when in truth, her thoughts have been stuck there, too.

Justice opens his mouth to tell her all his opinions on desertion, but they jam in his throat and he cannot.

"I know what your ideals dictate," Elsie says into the resounding quiet, "But maybe think about looking the other way."

And he tries. Gods help him. He does. A good soldier sees neither black nor white, though they wish you would, a good soldier thinks about his actions, and their consequences.

Elsie says, "You can tell them I died in the crash. They'll believe you."

"It wouldn't be the truth, though."

She smiles a little. "Justice was a fitting name for you."

His scowl is wasted on her, thrown at her blind side as she lies down on the bed they've made and tugs their blanket over her shoulders.

Justice stays up for a while longer, looking at the scratches he's put in the fuselage, thinking about tomorrow. Tomorrow, when they'll open the fighter up, look at what needs to be fixed. Tomorrow. Maybe it'll have minor damage? Maybe they'll be able to climb into the cockpit, start it up, soar into the atmosphere. Tomorrow.

When he does finally lie down beside Elsie, she's awake, her eye open, studying him. He pillows his head on his arm and studies her back.

"I don't know if I know how to let you leave the IUA." She should know his thoughts so she's not so betrayed when he takes the controls and guides them to Aurora.

"You're too good for your own good," Elsie whispers, though there's no one around to disturb. "One day, you're going to get hurt."

"Morals protect you, not destroy you." Justice whispers, too, matching her level.

"You should do what your conscience tells you," Elsie says a beat later.

* * *

The sun pushes through a bed of clouds, breaking morning across Aurora Polaris. Justice watches the snow melt, turning soft, then puddling. Some leaches into the fuselage, soaking the ground. He moves closer to Elsie, closer to the middle. She folds around him, holds him close, still in sleep. Her hair sweeps across her forehead. Her skin is smooth, interrupted only by the occasional freckle. She looks young, injured for a cause she never believed in. Something in his chest slides and for the first time in his twenty-five years, he's not so firm in his beliefs.

He stays where he is for another hour, Elsie sleeping on his chest. The fuselage warms rapidly and sweat slicks his skin, but still, he doesn't move, not until she does, stirring, spreading her fingers across his suited chest. There's material between them but he still feels the nuance of her touch. He thinks about the day at the pool, her cheeky smile, her affirmation she knows almost all there is to know about him. He wishes, as she rises, that his suit covered more. Then she looks at him, just a glance, and what he sees in it makes him not really care.

She pushes away from him, though, stands. "Let's go look at that ship."

* * *

It takes some levering to get the fighter level, and when it crashes down, Justice winces, afraid for the fuselage. He can't see if there's any damage to it, though, not without hoists, and he's fresh out of those.

Elsie is the first into the cockpit. She lays her hand against the recognition panel and presses the start button. The computer boots. Justice holds in his yell of pleasure and is thankful a second later when the ship throws code after code at them. He catches some of them—fuel lines, ignition coils, docking guidance.

Elsie isn't discouraged, though. She shuts it down, moves to the back of the ship, starts digging out tools, an oxyacetylene torch, hands some to Justice and directs him to the engines and together, they start the long process of getting the ship running again. The day gets hot. Justice pulls down his jumpsuit to his undershirt and Elsie does the same, tying it around her waist. Her skin gleams beneath the sunlight, her hair like a fiery beacon.

She doesn't ask, as she works, what they're going to do once they're in the air, which direction they're going to go, her fate. It's all Justice can think about.

She hesitates as she works, uncertain as her fingers move over the metal, adjusting this, that. Her file says she has experience in engineering, but he thinks that might have been a bluff to make her seem more useful to the IUA. Who was the real Elsie Crimson before she was a cadet?

"Do you like what you see?" she asks, cheeky smile primed.

For once, Justice can't bring himself to mutter and turn away, denying her claims. He simply leans back, watching her, and after a moment, Elsie continues to work. She moves beneath his gaze as graceful as a dancer between poses and he sees she is many things. But not an engineer. Not a soldier. He corrects her mistakes in silence.

* * *

Three days slip by. They work tirelessly, breaking only for meals, sleep, snagged in snippets. Justice is too restless for the deep and dreamless. Elsie is, too, tossing and turning, curling into him, then pushing away. She comes back, shivering, and Justice holds her tight until she does it again.

By the time the sun sets on the third day, he feels like a live wire, stripped bare, sparking against Elsie, who is frayed, too. She leans into it, though, leans into him, their blanket rustling around her shoulders.

"Tomorrow," she says in the dark, in the cold. She splays her hand against his chest, over his heart, pressing the word in, igniting a fire in Justice. All he can think is _, tomorrowtomorrowtomorrow._

"You can come with me," Elsie says. "We don't have to be at odds."

"We don't have to be," he says after too long.

"But we will be."

He wants to tell her he's going to let her go but even he doesn't know if that's true or not. He thinks it might be. Admitting it feels like a betrayal to everything he's ever believed in, though, and despite everything, he's not ready to say it aloud.

"Do you really want to go back to it?" Elsie wonders. "I mean, right now, you can be anyone. Do anything. You can disappear, reappear someone new. They won't even know. They won't even care. Almost no one gets this opportunity."

They will care, though, Justice knows. He's not a ghost, he can't erase his presence, and eventually, word of his survival will get back to the IUA. Besides, "I like being part of the IUA."

It's her turn to wait too long between words. She doesn't get cold, though, doesn't turn away from him. Her hand lingers on his chest, drawing designs through his suit onto his skin. She traces the IUA patch, his cadet insignia, thinking whatever it is Elsie Crimson thinks; he knows her better now than he thinks he knows most people in his life and still, it's impossible to decipher her thoughts.

"You'll make a good soldier," she says at last.

It sounds like a compliment but doesn't feel like it, not from her. "Thanks," he says anyway.

"Do you ever feel like you're pulled toward things that are bad for you?" Elsie lifts herself up on her elbow to ask. Her hair is a red waterfall, tickling Justice's neck. He looks into her one good eye and thinks _yes._

In answer, he cups her chin, pulls her in.

Her lips are cold, but her hand is warm on his face. She smells like antiseptic and lithium grease. He is unsure where this puts them if he's on one opposing side of a very big issue and she's on the other, but he does like it, the press of her body against his, the humanness of it in this strange world, her warmth as the night air falls into the minuses and the snow is falling all around their fuselage, pinging softly on the metal, piling up outside their door.

One of the three moons cuts through the snow clouds, and the effect is surreal, limning Elsie in silver. She slides her fingers across Justice's jaw, deepening the kiss. He has a choice, he sees, she's waiting for him to say yes, and pull her close, or no, and push him away. He pulls her close, unzips her jumpsuit, and she his, crawling out of them in the ungainly way they must, a second skin they're too distracted to think about very much.

Once bare, she settles on top of him, her weight a comfort. Her hands dig into his chest. He finds the grooves in her body, where her skin presses against the bone. She's spare from the passing days but beautiful still, lithe, extending their kiss, fitting their bodies together, her live wire against his.

When he slides inside her, she gasps, and he catches his breath so it can't fog between them, blur his image of Elsie. She looks like a wilding, the way they do as they rush into something dangerous, and he doesn't understand now. Perhaps in the days to come after their escape from Aurora Polaris, when he reflects upon this moment, he'll see it in a clearer light. But now. Now he takes it as need.

Her breasts bounce when she does. Her skin lifts in goosebumps. It's cold. Justice pulls the blanket up around them, presses his palm flat against her lower back, pulling her in close after every time she lifts. She pants, moans, twines her fingers in his hair. Her cheek presses against his when she's not kissing him, and her breath chills him as quickly as it warms, he's pulled between the sensations and thinks Elsie is like that, a winter storm, a hot summer day.

He ventures between her legs, finds the spot that makes her cry out and soon, her breath gets ragged, pauses. Her muscles lose their tension and Justice can feel her opening around him, getting softer, wetter. He can't hold back any longer.

Afterward, Elsie lays beside him, one leg still thrown over his body, and it's cold, he knows he should dress, adjust the blanket better, but he doesn't want to move and shatter the euphoria throbbing through his blood.

He sleeps.

* * *

Sleeps too long. The sun is a high slash in the sky when he wakes, which is unusual. He's an early riser, up at the crack of dawn every day.

Justice stretches his limbs and finds Elsie's spot vacant but still luke-warm. He waits several minutes for her return until he hears the low, monstrous hum of a fighter engine.

Sleep flees his bones. He's awake and tripping into his jumpsuit. Excitement drills through him with every beat of his heart.

 _She's done it,_ he thinks. The engines are running, and they're going to get off his gods forsaken planet _today._ Now, even.

Normally, he would look around at their leavings, absorb the almost month-long life they've lived on this planet, but Justice is ready to be in the air, the atmosphere, and avoids looking back.

He moves as fast as his injured ankle will let him, pushing through the plant life out to the ocean's edge. The ground is soggy with melted snow and he slips from time to time, injuring himself further but carried on by pure need and excitement.

Then he hears something strange. The engines revving up. Justice pauses to make sure he's heard correctly.

Yes. Elsie's bringing the ship into the air. Something plummets in his chest and comes to terms with the situation before his brain can. He still breaks out onto the beach, a smile on his face, to watch the fighter lift into the air. It hovers, wobbles, one engine falters. He can see through the cockpit window Elsie's face contort, a shot of panic dancing through her eye. But then the fuel line clears of whatever was blocking it and the fighter rises further.

Too high.

Elsie turns the ship away from him, out over the water. The engines heat up, the flames turning pale blue, scorching the ground beneath the fighter, singing the skin on Justice's face because he's too close.

She shoots off over the ocean, up into the air.

Justice's smile falls away in increments as he watches her breach the stratosphere, soar right into the mesosphere, exosphere. Then she's gone.

* * *

He waits on the beach for a long time, sometimes getting the energy to shoo away the bugs that want to sting him. Sometimes not.

His legs are burning welts by the time the sun sets. He hardly feels it, his fury coils through him, boiling away almost everything it touches.

Every second he sits staring at the black sky is another curse he puts on Elsie Crimson. His hatred fills him up, spills over, and he screams himself hoarse, screams until he's sick, screams until his ears are ringing and his blood is singing, and his thoughts are dead of everything but revenge.

It snows. It piles up on him, freezing him right to his bones. Still, he doesn't move, except to close his eyes.

* * *

Justice thinks he's dead. Hopes, for Elsie's sake. But when he opens his eyes, it's to the vaulted ceiling of a ship. There's a plaque mounted to the wall, dubbing it the Atlas, a military cargo ship.

A person moves into Justice's field of view and he recognizes Eraser with his dark and steady gaze. He rests his hand is on Justice's forehead, expression complicated. Justice is transported back in time. It's late spring, both of them are breathless with cold and damp, Justice is laughing after falling on a patch of ice and Eraser is standing over him, looking at him like this. It's care, it's concern, it's something more.

"Good. You're awake."

It's so good to hear the voice of an old friend, Justice feels his chest contract. He clears his raw throat. "Am I dreaming?"

Eraser shakes his head. His fingers flex minutely, card through Justice's hair almost possessively, fall aside. "We thought you died."

Justice doesn't know what to say.

"The Admiral wants to question you," Eraser says.

"Now?" Justice sits up. He's dry, someone's stripped him of his jumpsuit, replaced it with blankets.

"When you're dressed." Eraser stands. "He wants to make sure you had nothing to do with the sabotage."

"Sabotage?" Justice repeats.

Eraser nods. "They found evidence of tampering on the cooling coils of the Hermes in the logs."

Everything slides into place. "Elsie was supposed to double-check those." Elsie, who was never very good at engineering.

Eraser starts to hear her name spoken aloud but does not falter. "I think it's just routine questions. No one actually thinks you helped her escape when she left you on Polaris."

 _Abandoned._ "How did you find me?"

He hesitates. "A distress beacon was recorded for a moment above Polaris."

Justice tries to feel grateful Elsie didn't just leave him to die, but he cannot.

After too long, Eraser says, "Crimson left you a note. Did you know?"

Justice's heart dives. He shakes his head.

Eraser taps his comm, pulling up a hologram of tight, slanted writing. Justice can't read it from where he is. How many eyes have seen it, he wonders? He's ashamed first. Wraps himself in it because the aftertaste it leaves behind is a lot like anger and he knows how to digest that.

"Who else knows?"

"Just me."

"Destroy it," Justice orders. He doesn't want anything of Elsie's, except her surrender.

Eraser doesn't hesitate to carry out his command.


End file.
